She, Daniela Blake

I spent a whole morning yesterday observing the goings on at my local ΙΚΑ (recently renamed ΕΟΠΠΥ, and even more recently, ΠΕΔΥ) branch, as I was waiting for my turn to update a health document. 

The woman walked through the doors, holding a plastic supermarket carrier bag in one hand and a water bottle in the other. Her black tracksuit pants looked rather tight on her - perhaps she needed a larger size. They were matched by a white cable knit jumper with a sleeveless jacket. Her sports shoes were well worn. Her curly dark hair was neatly tied back into a little pony tail. She looked young, less than a quarter of a century. The young child that was trailing by her side like a beloved pet dog on a leash looked clean and well dressed. Number 92 was lit up on the priority number system. She looked at her paper: 85. She passed by all the other waiting people and stood in front of an assistant who was serving another customer.

"My number'th passed," she said, showing them the ticket. "Can I get intyu the chew now?" She spoke with what seemed like a lisp; her two front top teeth were missing.

"Only if someone else lets you pass," the assistant said without looking up away from her computer screen.

The woman did not seem to comprehend what she was told. No one spoke to her. They all continued to do what they were doing before she entered: The customers who were being served by the two assistants stood steadfast in front of the window in fear of losing their priority; the assistants continued to type and stare at the keyboard; the people in the waiting room checked their documents and cellphones.

"Can I path thwoo now?" the woman asked again. She edged closer to the window and put her hands on the ledge. The man standing next to her in front of the assistant's window gathered his documents, fearful they may get dirty from the water bottle that was slightly dripping.

"You'll have to come back tomorrow," the assistant replied.

A slight pause as the woman comprehended that last statement. And then a cry of anger:

"You bissch! I'f been here since the morning, with my shild, and you won't sherve me! You bloody bissch!"

And still, no one paid the woman any attention. She grabbed the child (who was still smiling) and left the room, cursing as she left.

"What's the matter, love?" a old-age pensioner asked her.

"Bissches! They don't want to help me! They don't care!" By now, she was crying. The pensioner asked her what help she needed, but the woman continued to wail, patting the child's head at the same time as she hugged it close to her.

"It wath my turn! They diden let me thwoo! I'fsh been here since the morning, with my shild, and they won't help me!" The old man shook his head.

"What number are they at now?" he asked, but he did not get any reply. The woman was continuing to shout and cry. The man walked away, checking his priority number before going inside to see what number was blinking.

The woman was now talking on her cell (not smart) phone: "Bloody bissches! They tols me to come back tomowow! How am I gonna come back tomowow?! Bloody bissches! I'm gonna call the police!" She must have said the word 'police' a couple more times before the supervisor came out of her office.

"What does she want?" the supervisor asked. "Tell her to come and see me." The few people in the office that had managed to secure a seat did not want to give it up that easily. The supervisor repeated her call: "Can someone tell her to come and see me." In the meantime, the woman continued wailing and shouting.

"She should have been given priority before she started using the 'police' word," said a girl wearing jeans, who was sitting on a seat waiting for her turn. "Everyone can see she isn't well in the head."

"Why she not well?" said the Albanian sitting next to her. "She look okay. She just lose number."

"She doesn't understand what's going on", said the girl. "She needs more help than you and me. And she has a child! She needs much more help than us." The Albanian nodded knowingly.

"She looked perfectly fine to me," said a fake-blonde well-dressed woman on the other side of the room.

"As fine as an illiterate country bumpkin," said the girl in the jeans. "She has no idea what she did wrong."

"We're all in the same boat," said the fake blonde. "We're all waiting."

The woman's cries continued to be heard. The supervisor again asked the others waiting to call the woman in. She herself did not leave her cubicle to do it herself. A man eventually told the woman that they would see her now: The woman was still sobbing when she entered the room.

"Come now," said the supervisor, "tell me, what would you like to do? How can I help you?" The woman stopped sobbing and handed her papers to the supervisor. The transaction went through without a hitch. The woman and the child left quietly. All's well that ends well.

*** *** ***

While I was waiting to get my own paperwork sorted out, I took walks around the IKA (EOPPY- PEDY) area on the Souda road, which has never really got itself a proper facelift. It remains scruffy, despite the modern constructions that are replacing old rundown buildings. After a 4-hour wait, I got my job done too.

Although I'm trying to focus on what was happening in the case of the woman that I saw, it is fair to say that not only Daniel Blake types pass through IKA. Every sector of Greek society passes through those offices at some point. IKA is seriously understaffed - the staff are not incompetent. They are even quite polite these days. Health checks are available to everyone, whether they are registered in the system or not (see http://www.haniotika-nea.gr/dorean-exetasis-gia-olous-sto-p-e-d-i-chanion/). The Greek health system is much more democratic than the Daniel Blake type stories I read in The Guardian.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

GR80s

"Until then, there was just a low class of urban dwellers. In the 80s, the western world middle class culture was created, which is why the 80s were the 'womb' of the post-junta era, even though the dictatorship ended in 1974." http://www.lifo.gr/print/print_feature/130598 

While in Athens last weekend, I visited the highly publicised GR80s exhibition (see: http://www.gr80s.gr) being held until mid-March at the former gasworks of Athens (aka Technopolis, one of the hippest art and music centres in Greece: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopolis_(Gazi)). GR80s is an exhibition about the 80s decade, consisting of 18 thematic units that try to describe the zeitgeist  of the time, through pictures, posters, news clippings, music, videos, various artefacts collected from that time period, as well as a few short texts that briefly summarise the decade, according to the curators. GR80s has been given great prominence in the media, and since it opened a few weeks ago, it has been received with great acclaim.

I lived through the 80s in NZ. In 1978, my parents bought a fish and chip shop in a kind of dormitory suburb outside Wellington, and I started high school, where I wore a school uniform. That's about the time when my mother first started spending money on clothes for her children - she used to make a lot of our clothes before that. Mother would also send parcels (by sea) of our used clothes to her sister in Athens, adding a few household goods in them (the basic potato peeler in particular). Some time in the early 80s, my aunt (who had found a job as a cleaner in a factory in the highly industrialized suburb outside Athens where she lived) told her not to do that any more because she could now buy a lot of material goods in Athens. We kept in touch with most of our relatives in Greece, mainly by letter, but occasionally we would call them. We never expected them to call us because we always thought of them as not being able to afford to do so (even though international phone calls in NZ were also considered expensive). We understood poverty in the same sense that we had seen it during our last trip to Greece in 1974: all our Greek relatives had a roof over their heads, and lots of food, but they didn't have a lot of material goods; some of them worked while others didn't; and they didn't really have much contact with the world beyond their borders.


Meanwhile, my whole family worked in our shop on a daily basis, for almost a decade, with the kids going there after school. One minute I'd be serving a customer, the next I'd be doing my homework. Life wasn't hard in the sense of hardships: in the case of my family, it was all about hard work. Our money visibly went into the accumulation of goods. We renovated our house and bought an apartment in Crete, we wore nice clothes and were given presents of jewelry by our parents, we read teen magazines, listened to vinyl records and cassettes, watched US and UK TV series and rented videos. We (but not our parents) went to discos and ate out occasionally at the 'exotic' restaurants that had recently opened in Wellington's restaurant scene, including Greek ones.

I did six years of free studies at university, finishing with a Master of Arts in 1990. I had gone on to post-graduate research because I had had trouble finding work before that with my arts degree: the NZ public service had stopped taking on employees, office work was getting harder to find, and ESL classes were no longer being subsidised, all due to a change in the political system: from safety net socialism, NZ was moving towards self-sustained capitalism (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogernomics). I was in the situation of being overqualified for most jobs and unqualified for others. But I still had to find something to do even though my studies did not lead to any particularly sought after qualification at the time. With my savings, I decided to do my OE (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_experience). I arrived in London where I started my journeys through Europe which would eventually land me in Greece in 1991.

I was surprised at what I found in Greece: people weren't poor like we remembered them 17 years before that. Many people under 40 had done some kind of tertiary studies, and most people were working, albeit with much lower salaries than what we were used to in NZ. Cafes and tavernas were often busy nearly every night of the week, and full at the weekends. Prices were much lower here than what we were paying in NZ for similar services. So there was still plenty of food to eat, and everyone had a roof over their head, mainly in the form of apartments in Athens, while our relatives in Crete lived mainly in detached houses. They all wore nice clothes and my aunt would joke about the potato peelers my mother used to send her: Athens was full of supermarkets by that time and most people owned a similar potato peeler.

This all made me wonder: what if my parents had stayed in Greece instead? How different would their life be, had they stayed here? Would it have involved just as much hard work as what we were used to in NZ? Would we be just as comfortable, like most of the Greek side of our family? With the benefit of hindsight, our personal lives all seemed to be going down the same path, despite coming from different directions. Both my mother and her sister could rightfully be described as coming from the peasant class in Greece. They had left their villages and entered menial labour in NZ and Greece respectively: ie they had both entered the urban working class. From this rapid rise in societal class emerged the middle class of Greece, which was practically non-existent before the 80s: you were either very well off, or just making ends meet. My aunt remained working class but my parents differentiated when they bought a business which moved them into the SME (small medium enterprises) class, and their income level rose to allow them to afford a more comfortable life: ie closer to the middle class of society. My aunt stayed poor, but living frugally all her life, she was able to help her children (who also remained in the working class) to build modest homes with her savings, while the children from Kiwi side of the family all entered the middle class as university graduates. We had arrived, so to speak.

The Greek 80s were a time of great hops and simultaneously great change in Greece, the decade of out with the old and in with the new. The Greek 80s are often regarded as a highly misunderstood decade because of their emphasis on mass overconsumption and the rise of populism - with the implication that the political decisions taken in the 80s are 'responsible' for the present day crisis that Greece is going through because they surreptitiously paved the way for its arrival, ushering in the great catastrophe that Greece experienced in 2010 when the effects of the crisis became evident as the bubbles began to burst all around us. We are now seen to be living with the consequences of that decade's thinking. Greece was left unguided as she entered the western world, with EU entry in 1981. Had she (or her partners) realised that she needed a bit more help (and a lot more monitoring), perhaps it would not have gone so horribly wrong. EU entry gave Greece - and the Greeks - the chance to renew their identity, and to a certain extent, we did just that: we became very vain. Vanity's consequences led to our eventual economic downfall, which then led us to an identity crisis (a similar one that the UK and the US are in right now).

By the time I arrived to Athens in September 1991, Greece was swinging: no one was really poor, and most Athenians had embraced materialism to the point that the poor and frugal life of the past had been eradicated. No doubt many treasures were lost in that decade, as people threw out their old (read: vintage) home furnishings to replace it with more modern items. The 90s signalled an awareness in modern thinking, but not a rise in webification which was happening throughout the rest of the western world. In the 00s, wealth was out of control which imploded in the 10s with the economic crisis (but those decades are for another discussion). In retrospect, I would say that the main difference with Greece was that she was constantly coming, but never really arriving.  Things have speeded up now, given that Greece finds herself in a similar situation now as NZ was in the 80s (as I describe above) - but we are still not there. We have not quite arrived yet. But GR80s shows us that we actually have come a long way: we did not quite get there, but we are ahead in the game of working out who we are and where we are going.

GR80s is fully bilingual in Greek and English, and uses multimedia audiovisual resources, with some real-life, real-time re-enactments from that decade, in the form of a fully functional home, complete with ringing doorbell, a TV playing shows from the time, a telephone from which you can hear conversations with an 80s ring to them, and real life actors pretending to live in the house, and uttering the punchlines of the era through their unscripted dialogue, which the public are also invited to take part in (once they realise that the couple in the house are actors - my daughter caught onto this before I did). I could tell you a lot about what I learnt from that exhibition, but I would only be regurgitating someone else's words (which you too can read here: http://www.gr80s.gr/index.php/en/exhibition by checking the list of the thematic categories covered), so I've gone one extra step and translated what is being said about GR80s in the Greek press, which is raving about it as nothing short of brilliant. The blue highlights in the texts below are my own.

*** *** ***

"So that's what the 80s were like" by Dimitris Politakis (02/08/17 - click here for the Greek original).
We may find its stereotypes choking, but it was the last decade that was looking forward.

I've thought about popping in to see the exhibition a couple of times to gaze, with the distance of time, at the various totems and fetishes of the era - almost all of them utterly and painfully familiar - but I haven't been able to visit this great exhibition about the Greek '80s. The truth is that it keeps me tripping over and it prevents me from confronting something that inevitably resembles an entertainment mausoleum for the whole family (for the old to remember and the young to wonder), something between a vast theme park and a little train of horrors, from which several skeletons step out along the way, which had experienced the great glories of 30-35 years ago, between the period of the Metapolitefsi [the Political Change that occurred in Greece after the Papadopoulos dictatorship] and the "dirty '89" (I always liked that term, it had a Clint Eastwood vibe to it). I have a personal issue with the '80s. I am not bothered so much by their impression on society but on me personally. I clearly have my origins in them, and since then. There is a world inside of me that never experienced mobile phones and the internet (the fresher generations can't even begin to conceive this, as such a fact cannot be digested in any way).  

It has nothing to do with nostalgia, it's just that one recognizes a place of origin that is more important than that which any surname can imply. I find it quite impossible to imagine that I could have gone through pre-puberty and adolescence (ie years of an endless and agonizing expectation) in another decade, as it seems inconceivable not to have spent my childhood in the '70s, in the alleys, streams and spaciousness of suburbia, and then home for lunch, a bit of school pseudo-homework, and "Little House on the Prairie" on TV. In other words, imagine that I was a teenager in that premature '80s Change and had got into trouble with some ragbags and political youth groups, or in the '90s ... hmm. Now that I think about it, the '90s passed by me like a brutally stretched, prolonged adolescence (like a teenage fixation, if we analyse it pathologically), but that's why they seem - despite looking like they were so much more FUN - less significant, cloudier in relation to the' 80s, where I think I remember everything.

What has however remained with me is not so much the performances of the epoch - the café-disco-tutorial lessons-shoulder pads-gaiters phase, and the like - but a lasting impression: those evenings when I returned home with the trolley bus, that there is a future out there for me, a long and undeclared one full of exciting surprises and twists. It was not just that I was a teenager and I saw before me seven lives and a few more, it was the last futuristic period before the odometer was reset and postmodern relativism swept it all away and the carousel started turning with all kinds of revivals, recycling, remakes, remodelling and rebooting. Who would even think to organize a festive exhibition in the '80s about the Greek '50s? No one! That past was a thankless, gray and dimly lit universe without neon and fluey hues, and only someone who is paralyzed by nostalgia would dare to say that it was better 'then'. In the '80s, despite the permanently unstable political climate and the various premature 'births' that would eventually give birth to the successor of the Change, there was a widespread impression of a path towards prosperity and reconstruction, without any pending bills, misunderstandings and collective illusions.

Perhaps more interesting would be a corresponding exhibition on the taboos and totems of  the '90s, related much more to the current quagmire, not only as a genealogy of the Crisis, or as the first seed to be sown of the suffering that we are now going through, and our absolute inability to finally agree not just on the easy parts, but also on more difficult issues. Poor and arrogant, we triumph, as undignified losers...

My photos of the exhibition

"Why are the '80s an absolute minefield for history?" by Kosta Katsapis, Historian at Panteio University, Curator of the GR80s kiosk "Working class culture and workers' demands" (02/02/17 - click here for the Greek original).
Fragmentary studies for this critical period are strictly necessary.

Braudel once said that "the secret object of history, its deeper motive, is the interpretation of synchronicity." Therefore, each palpation of the historical past can only be related to the questions raised by the present, the doubts and insecurities that are formed in the present time. The '80s are not only an exception but they are the epitome of the above finding. The '80s are indicated in the context of the economic crisis as the matrix of "evil", and at the very same time, the last period that deserve to be remembered as the "years of innocence". This contradiction should not be a cause of worry, since the '80s are, at any rate, synthesized from both the contradictory developments and no other time period that existed before or followed them (the most charismatic political figure of the same period, the cosmopolitan intellectual, yet at the same time an unrefined populist, being Andreas Papandreou: he was the Great Contradictor).

The 80s saw politicization reaching its apogee while party affiliations began to organize the personal life and social relations of the individual, in the most outrageous way by today's standards: take, for example, the case of the "blue" and "green" cafés (see photo inset). This however incubated pluralism and the explosion of individualism that would prevail in the next decade. It vindicates the political struggles of many decades; it therefore constitutes as sovereign, legitimate and legitimized the oppressed left narrative, while at the same time it chops off its foundations, enabling the layers hitherto excluded from prosperity to enter mass consumption and the Western lifestyle. Therefore, the history of the 80s is an absolute minefield, a fact that is due not only to fragmentary studies which up to now have been carried out on this decade and make this previously uncharted territory substantive, but also because of the strange peculiarity of the period, which allows different kinds of - and often diametrically opposed - approaches, evaluations and (unfortunately) certainties.

Therein also lies the major difficulty that has had to be overcome in order to set up the GR80s pavilion about "Working class culture and workers' demands." In the beginning, as is common, a question is posed: what is the difference between 'populist' and 'working class inclusion' in the '80s? The answer might seem easy, but the phenomena are quite deceptive. Already during the '80s the concept of a working class culture became a privileged field of ​​conflict between those who reminisce in or fantasize about a lost purity, and those who see the authenticity of the populace's soul in marginal, heretical and provocative manifestations of daily life, at least among the mainstream intelligentsia, for example in the skiladika [low class cabaret style music joints]. In this context, it was decided that the pavilion should take into account not only the secular synchronous approaches which have their origin in academic environments, artists or generally among the intellectuals (eg the film "Rembetiko" or the TV series "The Minor Note of Dawn"), but also in the debate about working class culture that is now regarded as largely obsolete and has disappeared from the public eye, the one that is regarded as "bothersome". And it is annoying precisely because it reflects the ongoing progress made by the (until then) grass roots layers, in terms of civilization, of prosperity, integrating, sometimes inelegantly in our own eyes, in a clumsy way or with notoriously bad taste, the symbols of a culture which for them composed a charmingly attractive terra incognita.

Therefore, the authenticity of working class culture (if ever it existed) is aimed at being identified not in the intellectuals of the universe, many of whom have (if they do at all) a marginal relationship with working class neighborhoods and their realities, nor in the often excessive and equally constructed obsessions of lovers of marginal cultures. Conversely, if there is some kind of working class culture that is able to be an exemplary model for understanding the 'lay' people and their culture in the '80s, it can probably be traced in the place where, day by day, a hybrid reality is shaped, where the past coexists with the present - that place where the heavily populist identities feel secure enough to move away from the culture of need and its often pre-modern values ​​and to integrate new consumption patterns, survival strategies and behaviors: behaviors which with a fair amount of malice would be accused by "koultouriarides" [a disparaging way to refer to pseudo-intellectuals] as a vehicle of the enforcement of kitsch and the bad taste which (supposedly) is often associated with the 80s.

To solve the puzzle, it was decided albeit informally but very obviously to focus on a suburb whose development largely reflects the progress of the working classes towards prosperity or, in sociological terms, "upward mobility", which characterised the '80s of - in Papandreou's terms - the "disadvantaged": the suburb of Gerakas, which is a kind of unexpressed case study for the pavilion "Working class culture and workers' demands," ​​a suburb where the "honest toiler" - as the hopeless romantics would call them - lived during the period under consideration, namely former internal migrants, public and private employees, workers and the self-employed. Many of them movingly kept records of their everyday life and even more movingly and with abundant kindness responded to the call of GR80s for cooperation. Without them, it would not have been possible to set up the pavilion. (The author publicly thanks Despina Daliani and Athena Manzano, and the members of the association "Gerakas' source" for their trust and valuable assistance on this matter.)

More articles on GR80s in English:
http://www.ekathimerini.com/212863/article/ekathimerini/life/the-1980s-anatomy-of-a-watershed-era
http://www.ekathimerini.com/216042/article/ekathimerini/life/rewinding-to-the-era-of-analog-politics
http://www.ekathimerini.com/215939/article/ekathimerini/life/athens-show-revisits-politics-arts-lifestyle-and-technology-in-80s-greece

And more in Greek and other languages:
- 'I was there' - a photoset of the GR80s opening night:  http://www.lifo.gr/guide/culturenews/i_was_there/130758
- GR80s series of articles on LIFO (most widely read print and web magazine in Greece): http://www.lifo.gr/topics/view/93
and http://www.lifo.gr/tags/%CE%94%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%AF%CE%B1+%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85+%2780 (don't miss out on seeing the 80s house: http://www.lifo.gr/articles/urban-life_articles/130450 )
- French interest in GR80s: http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/02/02/la-grece-des-annees-80-une-expo-antidote-a-la-crise-a-athenes_1545785

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Trans

Just another day in the life of a Mediterranean cabbie.

Last weekend, while I (ie my husband) was first at the Agious Apostolous taxi rank, I picked up a fare at Hrisi Akti, just a few metres away from the stand. Dusk was beginning to fall and there weren't many people at the beach. On seeing the taxi, the woman waved out to me. She sat in the back of the cab. I asked her where she was going to. She looked a little lost. She was tall and well groomed, Her clothing choices made her stand out as very well dressed. 

"Well, I don't really know where I am," she said, "but I walked out here from the lighthouse, where I'm staying, at a hotel close by there." 

"You walked out all the way from there?" I was very surprised to hear this. She said she wanted to get a bit of fresh air, and had lost track of the time. She would have walked along the coast, which is quite empty now that the tourist season is over. 

I asked her for the hotel name, which she seemed to remember. She was from (another Greek town) and she was staying in a high-end hotel in Hania for a week, on business. She said she liked the town very much, telling me about the how the Venetian port had made an impression on her. She was in a chatty mood, laughing a lot as she talked in a carefree sort of way. We talked so much about the town in that short ride to the hotel, that I didn't have any time to ask her about her line of business. When we arrived at the hotel, I gave her my business card, should she need another ride. That's how I picked up another fare from her, when she phoned me yesterday, to take her to the airport. 

When I arrived at the hotel, she was waiting at the lobby with her suitcases. She seemed to have a lot of luggage. I helped her with the cases and she sat in the front passenger seat. She was immaculately dressed, perfectly coiffed, and well made up. She had a decolletage you could dive into (husband's choice of words) and get lost in (again, not my wording). 

"So how did business go?" I asked her. She said Hania was good for trade, but not as good as Iraklio, where she was based last week. "My phone rang every half an hour here," she said, "but in Iraklio it rang every ten minutes. I made enough money to cover my expenses. Hania is more beautiful than Iraklio, but it doesn't bring in profits."

"It's a bigger town," I reminded her. And then I realised that I had not asked her what line of business she is in. "So what do you trade in?" 

"I trade in myself!" she exclaimed, with a ring of laughter in her voice, as she swept her hand in the air from head to toe. I suppose I could have guessed, but I don't see why I should have guessed. No one can really guess what anyone is doing these days because we are all doing so much. Our appearance as Greeks is very global, so the traditional way of regarding people by their appearance is pretty much gone. 

She explained that she conducts all her business online these days, and she is well connected with other people in the same trade. So through the internet, people will know where she is available and when. This is how the locals who needed her services would know where she was coming to Crete. She also said she never flies Ryanair because of their baggage restrictions, preferring Aegean Airlines. "I need to carry my makeup bag, laptop, day bag and travel documents. Ryanair would leave me in the cold if I tried to get all that through." I noticed how well dressed she was: everything she wore was a brand label, including her accessories. 

Our arrival at the airport signaled the end of a very interesting conversation, like many I have with strangers who introduce me to details of their life that are often very different from my own. I wished her a safe journey and expressed my hope that I will see her again. "Don't worry," she said, "I have your card." She didn't have a card, but she gave me details of her escort agency, including the website which listed all her services. She was a real professional. 

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

People waiting!

All quotes and film excerpts come from "America America" (1963), by Elia Kazan, a Greek-American director, producer, writer and actor.
(Watch it here: http://putlockers.ch/watch-america-america-online-free-putlocker.html)

America is having her day today. Following the rage, through the media that has overtaken the whole world concerning the US elections, I can't help feeling a little heartened that Greece is not alone in having to make a bad choice about who to elect democratically to rule the country. The US elections have been revealing to the world the Emperor who wasn't wearing any clothes. Our world is very transparent now, and we are suddenly realising that politics is about grabbing hold of power by giving people just enough of what they want so that they feel that politicians really care about them. But they are lying. Politicians really don't care about you, they just care about holding onto power, as has clearly emerged with the ruling party in Greece. The UK is also another great example: by charging along with its agenda, with complete disregard for the country's judicial system, the Conservative party is making even non-conservatives believe in them, in their own attempt to hold power. It's all a case of giving everyone just a little bit of what they want, at just the right time. But it has come at a price:

"... the day came, here in Anatolia, as every place where there is oppression, people began to question, there were bursts of violence, sudden and reckless, people began to wonder, and some to search for another homeland." 

These words set the opening scene in Elia Kazan's "America America" (1963), set in 1896, in the cave dwellings of Cappadocia, in what is now modern Turkey. The United States has changed in many ways since the time period that the film was set in, but 120 years later, we find that the oppressed, like all those around the world, are again questioning, and this is accompanied by violence, while people are wondering not so much about a new homeland - we have discovered all the earthly ones - but what our homelands have become.

I'm going away... far away... to America! ... Hear me! You are my last hope.

If the world has turned full circle and everything that can be discovered has been discovered, then we have no more work to do here any longer. The working class is over - throughout the developed world, it has morphed into an employed class and an unemployed class. For perhaps the first time in a century, a lot of people are looking to the past instead of the future, in order to try to find a way out of this deadlock, and be 'great' again..

Τ’ αστέρι του βοριά θα φέρει η ξαστεριά - The clear skies will bring the star of the north
μα πριν φανεί μέσα από το πέλαγο πανί - but before it appears through the ocean, like a sheet, 
θα γίνω κύμα και φωτιά να σ’ αγκαλιάσω ξενιτιά - I'll turn into waves and fire to embrace a foreign land
Κι εσύ χαμένη μου Πατρίδα μακρινή - And you, my wasted distant homeland
θα γίνεις χάδι και πληγή σαν ξημερώσει σ’ άλλη γη - You will become a caress to the wound, as dawn rises in another land.

Can we really go back in time and let history be our guide to the future?

I don't want to be my father! I don't want to be your father! I don't want a good family life! A good family life? All those good people stay here and live in this shame! The church goers that give to the poor - they live in this shame! Respectable ones, polite ones with good manners! But I am going! No matter how! No matter! No matter! I am going!

But people have always found new solutions for all the problems that arise in the present time - as long as we have our health.

As of tomorrow, I will get one of those top hats that the Americans wear.

It's the bottom line; if you don't have that, you have nothing.

I have been beaten, robbed, shot, left for dead. I have eaten the sultan's garbage, and driven the dogs off to get at it. I became a hamal... but now I am here. Do you imagine anyone will be able to keep me out?

But you also need to have hope, and a lot more patience.

He saved himself... America America! He saved himself.

In some ways, our different worlds all seem alike now.

In some ways, it's not different here... But let me tell you one thing. You have a new chance here. For everyone that is able to get here, there is a fresh start. So get ready, you're all coming. 

But we continue to believe that we differ immensely form one another, and that there really is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel which will lead to utopia.

Come on, you! Let's go, you! People waiting!

We're all waiting, but we really don't know what we are waiting for.

I think you and I, all of us, have some sort of stake in the United States. If it fails, the failure will be that of us all. Of mankind itself. It will cost us all. . . . I think of the United States as a country which is an arena and in that arena there is a drama being played out. . . . . I have seen that the struggle is the struggle of free men. (Ciment, Michel (ed.) Elia Kazan: An American Odyssey, Bloomsbury Publ. U.K. (1988) p. 231; from Wikipedia)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

A very white view of Brexit

In all the Brexit discussions, I have not come across any discussion of the similarities between the Greek and the UK referenda. There are so many similarities, at least to me, and I wonder how the great economics analysts have missed this point, or maybe they have glossed over it. Since I haven't found anything written about it, I'll give you my thoughts on it in this post. If I don't do it, who else will?

A friend recommended to me that I watch the 'Lexit' film (click here if you wish to see it: https://youtu.be/Z0kuJhkMLWs) made by UK left-wing thinkers that wanted a Brexit outcome (and they got it). It's probably the most balanced Brexit debate I've seen as it doesn't use scaremongering or immigration fears. Probably this is its greatest downfall: it bases all the Brexit arguments on trade and markets. That is not what the EU is all about.

Lexit is, naturally, very biased against the EU, but it reminds me uncannily of the Greek left's idealistic beliefs before SYRIZA came into power. Syriza kept highlighting its desire to stay in the EU, but essentially, Syriza was covertly against the EU. We all know full well how strongly Tsipras fought against everything the EU tried to get him to do, and he STILL supports the Greek public during strike action against his own government, when it passes measures to meet the EU's demands. SYRIZA/Tsipras couldn't state publicly that they were against the EU for mainly one reason: Greeks, generally speaking, do NOT want to leave the EU and they do NOT want to leave the euro and go back to the drachma. This should have been the first sign pointing to SYRIZA's feeble-mindedness: historically, it's always been the left that has been against the EU, in all parts of the European world.

In many ways, Lexit seems to make sense when it says that the EU is a choice between the market vs society. It's mainly right-wingers who will choose the market (ie the EU), while left-wingers will choose society. The film mentions some of the greatest UK advocates of society: Tony Benn, a staunch Labour MP, and Bob Crow, a trade unionist, are among them. Bob Crow reminds me of Arthur Scargill, another trade unionist who fought against Margaret Thatcher; he is also anti-EU. These men are all said to be pro-workers' rights, but in the end, they are/were in essence supporting 'closed shops', something Greeks know about quite well from pre-crisis times. Mention was made in Lexit about the loss of workers' rights, aka the rules that trade unions insist on for workers, which often go against sound business practices. Trade unions had great clout in Greece's recent past (pre-crisis); they could (and sometimes still do) bring the country to a standstill and hold it to ransom - but only because the country 'had' money back then. Now that the government is not free to spend the meagre resources it has available in a random way, trade unions' power has been broken. It sounds a little Thatcherite, doesn't it? Indeed: Greece was just 20-30 years behind the times.

Trade unions are just another form of a market, a less open one, with their own specific rules and regulations that support their own members. By supporting trade union policies, we were not really being democratic. Lexit argues that the EU is made up of appointed members, not elected members, so it's undemocratic. But for the most part, members from one state are appointed by the elected government of that state. Isn't that what we elect governments for? We elect them to get on with the job, and not to have to keep asking us what to do every time they want to do something. Sometimes they get things wrong, other times they don't tell us everything (Lexit claims that TTIP - another trade agreement - is being discussed in secret); but we should all know by now that politics is a dirty game, and at the present time, we do not have an alternative to traditional politics when it comes to running a country. Having said that, politics is much more transparent these days - technology (the rise of the internet) have really helped towards this effort.

The Greek referendum showed a clear split between the left and the right, which is not quite how the UK referendum turned out. The UK referendum also saw right-wingers that supported the LEAVE vote. Of course, there is a huge difference between the Greek and the UK referenda, the main one being that the Greek one was based on a question that was very open to interpretation: the question of the Greek referendum, which went something like: "Should the Greek government agree on a particular loan agreement?" got a resounding OXI (NO) outcome. So the government didn't agree to enforce that particular agreement... they decided to agree to something else instead... which to many analysts felt much worse than the 'original' agreement. Most people would agree that the OXI of the people was reinterpreted as a NAI by the government, giving rise to many photo memes based on phone conversations between David Cameron and Alexis Tsipras.

David Cameron is speaking on the phone:

Hi Alexi! If the British vote OXI to the union, could you make it NAI? 

What might have happened if the Greek referendum question had been 'leave the EU or not', or 'leave the eurozone or not'? The answer would probably have been REMAIN in both cases. Take note: I am remembering what the mood of the time was back then. Even as late as September 2015, during the second general election of the year (the third national election if you count the referendum), the candidates/parties wanting to see Greece out of the eurozone were not voted in. Things may have changed now almost a year later - but in my opinion, not by much.

In the Lexit film, Greece is regarded as crushed, with vicious austerity being imposed. If a country doesn't have money, even the word 'austerity' is being misused: Greece is BANKRUPT. It doesn't have the money to spend on basic state infrastructure, which led to a loss of jobs in the over-inflated public sector, which in turn scratched off the veneer: Greece looks so unkempt. Greece had been crushing itself before becoming bankrupt and begging others for money; in the past, money appeared magically whenever it was needed, but this is no longer the case. No wonder Greece's public assets needed to be 'flogged off' (as lexit claims). Greece's referendum result was also regarded as crushed by the EU. But OXI remained OXI - at least for the referendum question. The NAI was only given for another agreement - but that something else wasn't subjected to a referendum result! So the fireman-trade unionist is not just biased but blatantly misleading when he says that Greece was forced to sign an austere bailout package: Greece wanted more and more money by the time it had come to that stage!

In my opinion, Lexit looked more like a trade-unionists' opinion about the EU. I found that I couldn't trust everything the speakers said - they are using their own forms of 'popaganda' to make their claims sound believable. They used Varoufakis' claim that 'EU = terrorism', but they dislike Varoufakis' support for the EU. They insist that the ECB created last year's bank run in Greece just before the referendum. These British Lexiters are totally clueless about Greeks' love of hoarding cash. It really wasn't feasible to have millions of euros outside the banks, in homes, buried in fields. We are talking about 2015 - no Greek government till then had even attempted to engage citizens to learn how to use plastic money. And citizens on their part were preferred cash, a bit like King Midas: they liked to see it and count it - because they were not educated in how to do the same thing with their plastic cash. But even that has caught up with Greece now: as of 1st of August 2016, only plastic payments will be accepted in some businesses.

Lexit concentrates on the UK fishing industry and blames the EU for destroying it. With a Brexit, the UK will supposedly be able to build up their fishing industry to its former glory, and ports will start working again, and so will all those workers like porters and fish cleaners who now don't have jobs because the fishing industry has been decimated. I really wonder if the EU (if it were indeed at fault here) is truly responsible for the demise of the fishing industry. Young people move away form small towns because they aren't as exciting as big towns - in short, they don't want to live in small towns, and when they are forced to move back to small towns for economic reasons, they generally wish they were living elsewhere. Reviving coastal northern towns like Redcar, Hartlepool and Sunderland (which all voted overwhelmingly for Brexit) will take a lot more than building new homes and providing more state services: you have to make people want to go and live there, and from what I know of small Greek towns, I don't think there'll be many takers.

What's left in the UK is to pull the trigger and start the Brexit procedure. But no one is in a rush to pull that trigger. I don't even believe that the trigger will be pulled. It will have to be done by the head Brexiter (whoever that will be, once the Tories elect their new leader) ... who will be living and working in London... which voted overwhelmingly to BREMAIN, not to BREXIT! We are probably just about to find out that the Greeks and the Brits aren't much different after all; that Brexit just might have to be reinterpreted, so that it will end up looking like a Bremain. There may be huge differences between the countries of Greece and the UK, but since the UK referendum, it's pretty obvious that 'we all different, but we all froot'.

Brexit was not just a Lexit: it was also a Rexit - David Cameron was clearly a minority in his own party. Lexiters dislike banks, large corporations, capitalism - in short, they hate the right. But many people to the right of politics also supported Brexit. Left wingers don't want to associate with right wingers. So Lexit is actually ignoring its brothers in arms. Brexit has caused so many divisions in the UK - divided not just the country (Scotland wants to stay in the EU); it's divided traditional political groups - who seem to have similar ideas with each other. What is needed is to understand why the right also wanted to leave the UK - and who was actually voting for which side.



On the face of it, Brexit was a protest vote in much the same way as the OXI vote in Greece. Both referenda showed a very stark divide in the country. The groups who voted for OXI/LEAVE are very similar, as are the groups who voted for NAI/REMAIN:

• OXI/LEAVE = 'I have nothing to lose': angry, poor, stubborn, idealistic, casting aside globalisation, nationalistic, nostalgic
• NAI/REMAIN = 'I have everything to lose': elite, wealthy, anxious, scared of losing comfort, progressive

It's easier to understand why LEAVE won when viewed in this way:
- where is most of the money?
- where are most of the jobs?
- where are the most unemployed?
- where do the happiest people live?
- where do the most anxious live?
- which people in the UK have an inferiority complex?
- which have a superiority complex?
- where do most people who insist on making their main income from the arts live?
- how much will a person get if they sold their home?
- where do most 'educated' people live?
- what did expats vote?
- which areas of the UK do neo-immigrants go to for work?
- which parts of the country are the most exciting?
- which parts of the country are the most boring?
- which parts of the UK rely on the London bubble?
- which parts of the UK does the London bubble rely on?
The answer to the last question seems to be 'none'.

A shake up of old stagnant values isn't a bad thing. Every once in a while, we need a shake up. But what does Brexit tell us about the right wingers who want it? Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage were the main 'stars' of Brexit. On the one hand, we have a former right wing mayor of London; on the other hand, we have a UK MEP who heads a small far-right party that strongly opposes immigration. What made them decide that Britain will be Greater when it Brexits? I can only think of one question from my list above that encompasses their view: they have superiority complexes, and as politicians, they like to be heard - in short, they are power hungry. For some people, the incredible power that they have over weaker sectors of society is not enough - they want more.

What about immigration? Well, there was just a TINY bit of talk about that topic in the Lexit film. Immigration is not about blaming individuals, says Lexit: "free movement is, at its core, a neo-liberal attack on labour, on bargaining power, and on wage rates." That can really only mean one thing: immigraiton brings wages down. I guess that this is a bad thing in Lexiters' minds. No immigrant was given any air-time in Lexit. Why? Aren't immigrants a driving force in the UK? Are there no Lexiter British immigrants? Lexit shows no interest in them. Even the fireman trade unionist admits this: "Trade unions... have been far too silent about the issue." Lexit is totally biased pro-white British people. There was no BLACK speaker in the film: only Aaron Bastani had a foreign sounding name (apparently, he is of Iranian descent), but his accent was clearly British, and he had nothing to say about immigrants. Hence, Lexit is an ethnocentric view of Brexit. A claim is made that the EU underestimates 'our own people': white British people, I take it. The credits lists mainly English-sounding names (very few are non-English). Lexit is kind of racist, if you ask me.

I'd love to hear your views. I'd also love to add some more questions to the list I made above. But the end hasn't come yet. Article 50 has not yet been triggered. We all know what the Greek OXI vote ended up looking like. I can already see that I will not be needing to rush to get a passport issued. The UK will still be a part of the EU for a long, long time. Good luck, UK.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Brexit

Greece crossed a similar line to Brexit almost a year ago, when it came close to Grexit. 

The only difference is that Greece was at the time like the lame child of Europe which needed to be dragged along by someone stronger. Thanks to the EU, Greece was propped up, despite the difficulties that this entailed for both sides. Respect is due to the EU for forcing Alexis Tsipras to stay in the meeting room in order to come to an agreement with the EU without a Grexit. 

Life is always harder on the disabled but they too have rights which can only be exercised in a supportive environment. Greece's bailout terms are tough, but that's because Greece was in a very very tough position. 

The UK is not regarded as being in a difficult position. Its not regarded as lame, like Greece.  The UK isn't being treated as disabled, like Greece was. Its being treated as pig headed. That's why the EU isn't happy with the UK - it didn't have to come to this, as the message of the song (which was playing on my local radio station this morning, right after the UK's referendum results were announced) implies:

We took the wrong route,

and don't ask how or why,

we found ourselves in this deadlock.

You might be to blame,

maybe I am to blame,

perhaps it was just meant to be.

Now there remains no other solution,

but only separation

and if a tear does appear,

time will dry it,

time will dry it.

I can't, you can't

go back in time,

to not make the same mistake again.

We now both see it,

from this impasse,

whatever we do to get out of it is too little, too late.

Now there remains no other solution,

but only separation

and if a tear does appear,

time will dry it,

time will dry it.

Bye bye Mr Cameron, hello money-loving and black-hating leaders.

Coming soon: Boris Johnson as PM, and maybe Trump to follow in the US (now that he got a bit of oomph from Brexit), two nylon haired tossers that will soon be ruling the world.

I hear Scotland wants another referendum now. The United Kingdom was never really united after all. 

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

January in proverbs (Ιανουάριος)

January is supposed to be as slow as molasses. In Greece, 2016's January has been full on. 
January has many proverbs associated with it in Greek culture. Click here for a list of them.

In January, I put the fear of God into the last lot of students who did not obtain a suitable grade in the TOEFL test. I give them the all advice and support they need, and I know that if they don't take my advice, they will probably fail. A couple seem not to be heeding it. Let's see what the results will show. And with this last testing session over, I finally took a week off work, at the beginning of the sales shopping period. Very convenient that my private writing jobs came in at the right time:  Γενάρης στεγνός, νοικοκύρης πλούσιος. Ι got myself new boots (€25), new shirts (€55 for 4), and new jeans (€30), with a little left over - maybe a new hair look? Even children ask me why I don't dye my hair. Maybe it's time I did. (Hm. The salon was closed when I decided to make an appointment. Is that a sign?)

January started off freezing - Αρχιμηνιά, καλή χρονιά, με σύγκρυα και παγωνιά; then it got warm - Δέκα μέρες του Γεναράκη, ίσον μικρό καλοκαιράκι; and now it's back to freezing. It is winter after all. The kids are walking around in short sleeves, making their parents feel very old as we bundle up against the cold. I can't believe they don't feel it. I don't remember under-dressing at their age. Perhaps we should turn off the heating and see how they feel then. But that's impossible - it's their bundled-up parents that can't cope without the wood fire.

Son's birthday party went very well - 9 kids turned up. They were really quite kids too - one was Albanian, another Bulgarian and one more called himself Skopian (I suppose he's been told not to say Macedonian).  "It wasn't like that in my days," my husband said. "We were all Greek." He completely forgets that half his classmates were actually the children of refugee Greeks from Asia Minor, whose parents and/or grandparents had come to Crete in the early 1920s. (He went to school with kids who had surnames like 'Agop'). The difference between my childhood and my husband's and my children's is that the migrants were different colours at my school, whereas they were/are roughly the same colour in my husband's and children's classrooms. Τ' Αλωναριού τα μεσημέρια , και του Γεναριού οι νύχτες. We've all gone through some kind of migrant experience, but they've seen the migrants through cat's eyes, different shades of the same colour.


The kids watched a thriller movie with some donuts and cheese pies, then we served BBQ, baked potatoes and salad for lunch while they listened to youtube videos. The they played a  game which involved banging the door open and shut (I think they've damaged it a bit - Γενάρη διαβολόμηνα ποτέ σου μην ξανάρθεις) while each one took turns entering the room wearing a long white scarf. (I have no idea what they were doing, and I never asked them.) Then we cut the birthday cake and they watched another video till it was home time. Very innocent. My English friends remarked that their kids would be out on the lash at this age - I waited a long time that day to have a drink, and I had to make sure I wouldn't be ferrying kids around.

After the weekend, the skies finally cleared. We can now see how low the snowfall has been. Only the lowest lying hills are bare. That's why it's so cold. But it's a good sign: Γενάρης χωρίς χιόνι, κακό μαντάτο. And now, I also hear both kids sniffling, blowing their noses and coughing. Serves them right.


The cat walked into the house after a week's absence. He disappears like this every year at this time. Nα 'μουν γάτος τον Γενάρη κι ας μην είχα άλλη χάρη. But now, he's come back blind. His nose has been scratched, his tail is slightly torn at the tip, and his one good eye is now bloodshot (he lost his other eye very soon after he adopted us, about 8 years ago). He occasionally crashes into the walls of the house and he doesn't feel confident climbing onto and down from his chair. He also jumps when he hears someone coming into the room, out of fear - he can't see us but he can hear us. When we speak to him, he feels reassured, and goes back to sleep. We're letting him stay indoors throughout the evening, but he always wakes up in the middle of the night crying to be let out. He doesn't always want to stay in anyway. He's still eating well despite losing one of his teeth a few years ago, but I think he's on the last of his nine lives. Today, I spotted him at the nieghbour's and called out to him. He heard me and jumped his way towards the fence to get to me. He had no idea how to get through. He just sat there and meowed. I coaxed him to follow me until I found a hole big enough for me to grab him and pull him through. I took him home, and gave him something to eat, and then he stared at the door again, meowing to get out. Even though he can feel so human, I really need to remember that he's a cat. A Greek cat, for that matter. He will live out his ninth life, and we will probably never find out how he lost it.


The four posters on our bed finally lost their last life. They were always a bit wobbly, and we had tried to secure them, but the new laundry basket is a bit bigger than the previous one I broke, and I bumped it onto one of the posts as I was taking out the washing. The whole thing came crashing onto my head. We decided to take down the posts after that. Κόψε ξύλα τον Γενάρη μην κάψεις τα παλούκια. It had its charm, but in our later years, it served more as a place to hang clothes we couldn't be bothered putting away. (Now we'll have to start putting them away.) Just when I was thinking what I was going to do with the curtains, my daughter says she wants to get rid of the girly ones in her room so I offered to recycle the ones from the 4-poster bed (which now looks like a plain old bed) for her use. She said she'd like that. She's grown up so fast: just the other day, she asked her dad (she is a daddy's girl after all) if he could take away her cellphone for a few hours in the week so she can concentrate on school work. I'm very thankful she found a solution for her problem instead of me having it on her (perhaps she'll remember to wear long sleeves too).

I'm trying to sort out my needs from my wants. I think I want rather than need new hair (despite what kids tell me). I think I should have new hair, but I don't think I need it. At least that's what I think. I need new glasses. I've always worn glasses to see far away, but I'm having problems seeing things close up. If I take my glasses off, I can see things close up quite clearly. I don't have problems driving with my glasses. Perhaps I can let the glasses wait for the time being. I need a new cellphone. I keep worrying that because it's nearing 5 years old (HTC Desire, if anyone's interested), it will soon break down. But it does everything I want it to do, and even more. So I could say I just want a new phone because my present phone is old (and it has a 3" screen and naturally I'd like a bigger screen). So I'm putting that on hold too. The way I think about things, it seems that all my needs are really wants. Ο Γενάρης δε γεννά μήτε αβγά μήτε πουλιά, μόνο κρύο και νερά.

We weren't sure whether we needed a coffee maker. I've had the same coffee maker for the last 15 years: a tall plastic cup (I gave up on plungers after I broke two in succession), a very fine sieve (it's lost its handle, but I haven't seen anything in Hania that can replace it) and the good old Greek briki (I prefer gas to boil water and I didn't want another kitchen gadget on the worktop). Husband has always made his milky coffee using the briki, but recently he admitted that he didn't like the taste any more. He has a takeaway cappuccino when he's suddenly called away on a fare in the morning, and he has obviously developed a taste for it. I personally never found takeaway cappuccino tasty enough and it's always so hot it burns your tongue if you try to drink it as soon as you buy it. On the other hand, a cappuccino in a sit-down cafe is NEVER hot enough, and it's always too small (even the ones that are supposed to be large). In the end, I decided to buy a cappuccino maker (DeLonghi, €130), probably because I got a €50 voucher from the purchase of a vacuum cleaner. Kotsovolos (UK's Dixons in Greek disguise) was giving €50 vouchers with the purchase of various German products. I think I bought a Siemens (or was it Volkswagen - haha). Money well spent. Γενάρη μήνα κλάδευε και το φεγγάρι χέστο. We LOVE our cappuccino machine.

The country's in tatters at the moment. I always put it down to winter. Μωρή πουτάνα αμυγδαλιά π' ανοίγεις τον Γενάρη δεν καρτερείς την Άνοιξη ν' ανοίξουμ' όλοι αντάμα. The farmers are on the streets up north. Greek winter is at its shortest in Crete, which is why the farmers have delayed their raging here. How can they strike anyway, when the whole of Southern Crete is busy supplying the country's tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers at present? (A good experiment: plant only seasonal produce, and see how long it takes before the peasants' revolt begins.) Cretan farmers are too busy making money in their greenhouses at the moment, as well as keeping their olive trees trimmed. Κλάδεμα του Γενάρη κάθε μάτι και βλαστάρι. Come summer, they'll be busy harvesting tomatoes in the open. Που να σου να Γεναρη καλε και ξακουστιαρη. The north is now covered in snow. Βαρύ το καλοκαίρι βαρύς και ο Γεναροχειμώνας - Χιονίζει ο Γενάρης, ξεψυχάει ο γαϊδουριάρης. Northern Greek farmers have less to do in winter; no wonder they have the time to think about how to block passage to Makedonia Airport. In any other democratic country, this would be seen as placing the security of the country in danger. But not in Greece: we are just too democratic to stop the undemocratic. Democracy as its most democratic.

The lawyers (and scientists, and engineers, among others) are raging too, in their suits and ties. They no longer have 'their' people in government. They are no better than the farmers if they think they deserve different taxation methods and special pension funds. We are all in this together, mates: we ate it altogether, didn't we? I don't care if they strike forever. We are used to a very S-L-L-L-L-L-L-O-W justice system, because lawyers are used to striking in this country - they did it for different reasons before, but they didn't take to the roads like they do now. The greatest moaners are those that can't live without their comforts. They don't know how to downsize. May Syriza rule for a long time, no matter how badly they are doing it. Κάλλιο να 'δω σκυλί λυσσασμένο παρά ζεστό ήλιο τον Γενάρη. The others won't rule any differently, except to look after 'their' people, just as Syriza is doing now. That's what politicians call sharing.

Europe is also raging - again, against Greece. First they wanted Greece out of the eurozone (which they didn't manage to do), now they want her out of Schengen. They can't decide what to do with the Schengen among themselves. They say they want to break it, but if you ask me, those crying out for Schengen to be suspended want to go back to the past, where there was a mini-Schengen zone among a few Northern buddy countries, a Schinken zone in a sense. Northern European countries feel that they are the 'safe' countries, while they view Southern European countries as unable to control what is happening within their territory. They cannot get away from the fact that the north is landlocked against a cold inhospitable sea with hardly any neighbours - Οι γεναριότικες νύχτες, για να περάσουν θέλουν συντροφιά και κουβέντα - while the south borders the warm hospitable Mediterranean, and its nearest neighbours are Arab countries. The north thinks that the south lets in all the 'problematic' people. This is of course utter bullshit. The north has its own serious problems of home-grown terrorism. The problematic people are already living in Europe, as bona fide European citizens. Some countries were slow to catch onto this (France and Belgium in particular), while others (notably the UK) have been through it much earlier than the Paris attacks. In the meantime, Greece has done all it can for the refugee crisis. We put up a fence between Greece and Turkey to stop people walking into the country undocumented - did that stop them? No! They just sailed in instead. Apart from allowing them to drown, we can do nothing else. We cannot turn the boats back towards Turkey - that's a war signal. Marine borders DO NOT EXIST - Tsipras is spot on in this sense: No matter how many patrol boats are out in Greek waters, attempting to force a vessel of asylum-seekers back into Turkish waters is both illegal and dangerous, even in calm seas. So unless a Turkish patrol stops a migrant boat and returns it to Turkey, there is little Greek or Frontex patrols can do once it has entered Greek territorial waters but arrest the smugglers and pick up the passengers or escort the vessel safely to land. What use is the Greek navy in this case, apart from plucking people out of the water?

Those Northern Europeans think they know everything: Johana Mikl-Leitner, the Austrian interior minister, rejected Greek arguments about the difficulties of patrolling its maritime borders with Turkey and explicitly warned Athens about a Schengen expulsion. “Greece has one of the biggest navies in Europe,” she said. “It’s a myth that the Greek-Turkish border cannot be protected.” Come on over, Johana, and show us how to do it. Our arch-rival Turkey isn't bothering us. But not even Turkey can stop people from sailing away in dinghies. People say that Turkey is not a good place for refugees. Sure it isn't. But neither is Greece. These people do not want to start growing a few potatoes and keeping chickens to survive. If they did, we could probably accommodate them, just like we did during the population exchange: the numbers are the same now as they were back then. the present-day refugee issue involves approximately 1,000,000 people migrating to Europe in 2015 - the 1922 population exchange forced 1,000,000 Turkish-speaking Greeks to leave Turkey for Greece, while 500,000 Greek-speaking Muslim Turks were forced out of Greece and repatriated in Turkey. They were given land to live on and to live off - but this is not what the modern-day refugees want: they want a Western lifestyle. Many Greeks themselves are also biding their time, waiting for better days. Greece isn't a difficult country to live in; it is simply a little challenging at the moment. News sites write about the dreams refugees have for a better life in a Western European country. Is it any different from the dreams that Greeks have at the present? Most of us to a very large extent have a home and a family to turn to. Most of us also have jobs, albeit low-paid. We can't change that at present, and neither can we offer much more to desperate people. But we don't intend to let them drown, even if we can't offer them anything. We offer them a second chance to breathe; if they can wait with us, I'm sure we'd be happy to have them here too. History is just repeating itself, without any lessons learnt from the past.

When I travelled through Europe in 1991, between France and Belgium-Luxembourg (on the latter, what is a city that calls itself a country? Try cutting off its food supply and tell me if it can function), you rarely had your documentation checked. West Germany was also relaxed, but former East Germany wasn't - the wall had only just fallen, and the guards were used to doing things differently from their Western counterparts. Does anyone remember those pre-Schengen days when you could drive through different countries without presenting any documentation? "You cross the bridge from Germany into Luxembourg, turn left, and 300 metres on you’re in France – three countries in about three minutes, and not a police officer in sight. In 1985, ministers from five governments met here to launch a bold experiment in border-free travel. Cars and lorries with green dot stickers on their windshields could roam the five countries – the same three plus Belgium and the Netherlands – without passports." Those five countries trusted each other, they knew each other well. In fact, they were hardly different from each other, and they had nothing to share or divide between them. They just pretend to be different, so they can have a place to call their kingdom (and with a kingdom, you have rulers, and rulers have power. That's all.) They bordered countries they also trusted; they were all far away from Greece, who was cut off from them by the Iron Curtain that the north didn't trust. Greece was simply on the 'wrong' side. Suddenly, it's the other way round: Το Γενάρη το ζευγάρι διάβολος θε να το πάρει. Τhey now trust former communist nations more than Greece, who is now seen as the devil.

A lot depends on trust. A colleague who left Hania for Paris just after the attacks told us that immediately upon exiting the plane (from Athens), she had to show her passport. The French authorities had no proper space for this kind of check for flights within the Schengen zone. So they just 'caught' the passengers as they exited from the plane and checked their passports. They didn't trust the Schengen agreement after Paris was attacked - even though some of the attackers were bona fide European citizens, with French or Belgian citizenship. But checking your borders at all times is sensible, isn't it? Σ' όσους μήνες έχουν «ρο», μπάνιο με ζεστό νερό. Schengen just felt too utopian. Just because a law says you can pass through without checks doesn't mean you are maintaining safety. You are just putting your faith in the law, without really being certain that the law is protecting you.

So will I need a passport after all? Let's see. I've booked the tickets, I've hired the car, I've got my International Driver's Licence issued, I'm trying to get my credit cards sorted out (I really have no idea if they will work abroad, with all this capital controls σκατά). Will we be turned away at Border Control because we have Greek ID cards and not passports? I am wondering when my luck and my confidence in knowing what the future holds will run out. Χαρά στα Φώτα τα στεγνά και τη Λαμπρή βρεμένη.

There are often times when I am very thankful to be a Greek citizen. We are much more democratic and so very much less fascist than most other European countries. I HATE what Europe stands for these days: it is generally a money-focussed organisation that everyone wants to be part of, but they don't want to be led by a united Europe because each country thinks their way of seeing/doing things is superior to other countries' ways. They are afraid of losing their power. They want the money without the responsibility. They are no different from Greece, even though think they are. Do they really believe that they can have their Schinken and eat it too? With the North's predominantly sedentary lives and the ease with which Schinken is produced these days, having too much Schinken is a sure killer.

PS: All except one of my students passed the TOEFL. I've become a star. Everyone is in general agreement that he probably didn't follow my instructions. We're talking about a never-before-sighted test, sat by the weakest students, and they all scored more than 500 points (except that one person). When I initially suggested to my superiors that students need no more than one week of intensive courses for TOEFL, and they should sit the exam no more than a week after the course, they thought I was nuts. Instead, they listened to those fools (English teachers that no longer work here) who were bleeding them dry by demanding intensive courses for a month (so they could make more money) and staging the exam two months after the end of the course (when the students had forgotten everything they had learnt). Serves them all right - both the teachers that left (they were anything but teachers) and the superiors that didn't listen (and now have to admit to the role they played in the past recurring systemic failures in the English courses).

PPS: Get this: the same hair salon that I checked in at during my spending spree phoned me randomly with a €40 giveaway for whatever I want done! I can now have new hair. (Wednesday's the day.) Talk about good luck, which often comes to me. I think it's got to do with the level of patience I am willing to show. I have a lot of patience, and it really pays off. But I admit that this may not play a role in whether Schengen becomes Schinken. Let's see what develops.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.